A Man Enters: A Culture Leaves

Ohio State football was completely transformed in less than three years following Jim Tressel's hiring.

During his honeymoon season the Buckeyes won in Ann Arbor for the first time in 14 years. The following season they won the BCS title and in his third year they played the balance of the season without a serviceable tailback - yet still had a shot at defending their title entering the final game.

Tress was asked by Ohio State to resign three years ago this Friday. He's now been gone for the same amount of time as it took him to get the foundering Buckeye football program to the doorstep of back-to-back national title games (which he eventually did four years later).

His forced resignation was not met with tempered, reasonable views from salaried media people who were clearly not teeming with impotent outrage:

Jim Tressel...what a coward! Steps down on Memorial Day. All media is off and he takes the attention away from the vets. What a tool!!!

...all while professional contrarians failed to grasp that the mis-named Tatgate was really a scandal of consequences stemming from a serial coverup, rather than the petty non-crimes of violating amateurism:

What game has the media been watching? F---ing clueless. Tatts for memorabilia is quite possibly one of the more honorable things in CFB.

That said, since then we've evolved in the way we view and tolerate NCAA violations in addition to how we see the NCAA as a clumsy, ham-fisted cartel governing body. That progression has been conspicuous, but there has been another transformation in that span that hasn't been nearly as loud.

Ohio State football. You know - the big, punchable catalyst for that big, dumb summer.

Yeah, the Buckeyes run out of the spread now - but they ran spread elements for years under Tressel. Yes, they still win most if not all of their games, but that's a tradition that predates both Urban Meyer and JT by several coaches. And obviously, the offense has never been this good and the defense has never been this bad - but that's not program culture. That's all Saturday stuff.

Meyer doesn't appear to care for headaches.

Let's start with an example: Was there any Tressel defense at Ohio State where Jamal Marcus wouldn't contribute? Marcus and the Buckeyes are now "mutually parting ways" which - coincidence or not - brings the Buckeye roster down to its probation-compliant 82-man limit.

Jamal Marcus is going to be a disruptive guy. He's one of our more talented guys on defense.

[obligatory GIF of Marcus destroying Zach Zwinak] [rules are rules]

And now they're parting ways. Regardless of the real reasons why, this never would have happened under Tressel. Not like this - and definitely not this soon.

First, the oversigning thing, which has significantly contributed to programs like Alabama and LSU (and now Tennessee and Texas A&M) by building depth and writing off recruiting mistakes: Marcus isn't dead weight by any measure, but going from one of our more talented guys on defense to nope no longer on the team over the course of a single game reeks of surrender. Ohio State is going to quit a guy this good this quickly?

Troubled, apathetic or otherwise - contrast Marcus' abrupt departure to, say, Ray Small's. Tressel clinged to the failed idea that he could rehabilitate him for years. Marcus was going to be a disruptive guy as recently as January. Wait, maybe it was the wrong kind of disruptive.

Even when Small was still in high school, Tress wrote a lengthy letter to OSU admissions pleading if not begging for some latitude. Small arrived, impressed no one of consequence, poisoned way too many teammates most notably Duron Carter and finished his career spending more time suspended by his coach than playing in games.

Hindsight being flawless, Small was not worth a fraction of the trouble Tressel put himself through to land and keep him. Neither were Redgie Arden, Angelo Chattams, Louis Irrizary, Ira Guilford, Albert Dukes, Jonathan Skeete, Marcel Frost, Eugene Clifford...we'll stop there. Those are all Tressel pet projects whose headaches outweighed their contributions.

Tressel clINGED to the failed idea that he could rehabilitate Ray Small.

Meyer doesn't appear to care for headaches. The urgency to get-your-shit-together-or-leave on his watch compared to Tressel's is as glaring as [Glendale nightmare simile goes here]. All of those guys listed were forced to fail in multiples before finally finding their exits. We're not exactly sure what Marcus did, but it absolutely wasn't being lousy at football or repeated brushes with law enforcement.

Remember Taylor Graham, Dom Clarke, DerJuan Gambrell, Jaamal Berry, Jordan Whiting, Brian Bobek, Jeremy Cash, David Durham, Chad Hagan, Scott McVey, Melvin Fellows, T.Y. Williams and Jamie Wood - all Tressel recruits? They didn't last a summer after Meyer's hiring. He didn't coach a single game before those guys were gone, be it for scheme fit, legitimate, medical or other reasons.

The point isn't that they were exited; it's that they were exited post haste.

This is where you point and scream-laugh at everyone who believed Tatgate happened because Tressel would do anything to win. No, those headaches Tressel consistently gave himself with way too many football players - including the final headache that cost him his job as well as $21MM in guaranteed income - had far less to do with winning games than with his radical if not twisted obsession with saving troubled players.

Oh man. They had no idea what was coming.

Urban does not seem to be interested in maintaining a hobby like that. It just happens to be Tressel's passion.

Urb's predecessor also showed excessive loyalty to crony coaches, some of whom could not recruit or just didn't care to. Position battles? What position battles? You could predict the entire two-deep after signing day with a margin of error of no more than two players. The second-string offensive line was the first string with the same five guys at different positions.

Ohio State had the best offensive line in the country last year and did not win the Big Ten. That unit underperformed every single year under Tressel - right before it was fitted for conference championship rings. If an assistant cannot recruit or coach well under Meyer, he will not stay at Ohio State. This was not uniformly the case prior to his arrival.

Tressel preferred to handle discipline in-house and shade his players from shaming throughout his tenure. Meyer stripped scholarships from two starters for peeing outside at 1am during his first summer. He suspended his starting corner for a game last year for a bar incident that turned out to be an assault on him, and he suspended the best tailback in the country for three games after he aggressively reached in the vicinity of a female bar patron who had struck him in the face, on film.

There were no charges to be found, but it did not matter. Under Tressel Arden got a DUI and missed some practices. Santonio Holmes was arrested the week of the Michigan game and ended up scoring two touchdowns in it. Alex Boone caused a car accident while drunk and missed no games. We'll stop there.

There's zero tolerance, no shade and compliance über alles under Meyer, which is to say it isn't Tressel's program anymore. The Buckeyes still sing Carmen Ohio after games. The view from the blimp above Ohio Stadium on Saturdays is mostly the same. Michigan still loses the game that matters most.

It's been three years since Ohio State football came crashing down, and it's been almost 11 since that 2003 loss to Michigan; the most recent one suffered by any Ohio State team with a permanent head coach. Some elements of program culture are best left alone.

Others are going to change dramatically, which has undoubtedly been the case since Meyer took over. Ironically, it took Tressel - whom outsiders falsely believed was a win-at-all-costs coach - to leave in order for Ohio State to get a guy who values winning above everything else.

And personally - I would happily take either of them without blinking.

Goddamn, it's amazing how much we were willing to sweep under the rug (or were oblivious to) w/r/t Tressel. This is not to say that he is a bad man, or was a bad coach, or a sub-par molder of men. But there was a lot of wink-and-nod compliance that we as a fan base accepted. That's gone, and I'm not sure how to feel about it.

I'm not sure things were swept under the rug for their own sake. Tressel and Meyer view their position in life differently. For Tressel you're always a good kid or have the potential. For Meyer you're a good kid only if you excell in his system. I can respect both views. Where I tend to lean more with Meyer is his attitude with assistants. And then Bollman beat us ... :)

I think a more accurate statement would be, "you're a good kid that doesn't get many chances to screw up."

Like Ramzy said, Tressel wanted to mold these kids b/c he believed that was the best way to turn them into positive members of society. Meyer takes the approach that these kids need to learn the hard way, and to grow up faster. And I think Meyer took this approach b/c of his past experiences at Florida, and b/c of the situation he knew he was stepping into at OSU.

"And I think Meyer took this approach b/c of his past experiences at Florida, and b/c of the situation he knew he was stepping into at OSU."

Exactly. By all accounts, Meyer's "lax" discipline at UF was attributed to his desire to not abandon his players -- especially since he knew where they came from. Granted, no one knows how much of that is honesty vs. rationalizing, but that's what he's said in articles.

I couldn't agree more. It's amazing how willfully I ignored it when Tress was coach, too. Perhaps it was cognitive dissonance, but Tress draws such a stark contrast with Meyer's disciplinary policies that it sheds a light on how lax the former really was.

What's really ironic is that Tressel's disciplinary policies are identical to Brady Hoke's (they have a lot in common, actually; including their reliance on crony hires). Perhaps he's not as deserving of our spite if he's trying to "mold his men" in the same vein as our former coach?

My opinion...Tressel seemed to have more of the "family" approach...basically he figured giving up on a kid would be like giving up on his own son. Urban has a bit more of the "business" approach but still both great coaches and good men.

Tonsil surgery has you in a reflective mood (hope they are healing!). I read Urban's book and the narrative was that at Florida he tended to take the "care too much" approach and it bit him in the ass many times. Back then, he knew he was recruiting "problem" cases but he thought they could be turned around with some "care & feeding" and tough love so to speak. That obviously didn't happen in all cases and there was a lot of negative pub about all the arrests his players had at Florida.

It would appear Urban is taking a new approach at Ohio State. He doesn't want the headaches and has less to little tolerance for those who don't buy in after some period of time - much shorter than Tress was willing to tolerate.

I think both approaches are valid, but the thought of changing a young guy's life for the better, even if it costs you some wins along the way, is powerful and meaningful.

I would argue that Coach Meyer cares even more now. If you violate and disrespect rules repeatedly, Coach Meyer won't act as an enabler of future indiscretions. If you can't change your behavior (whatever it may be) in your current situation, you need to change your current situation. Coach Meyer is just facilitating the change.

If you listen to Spartans, Bollman is a gd offensive genius. To which I usually respond, he's either a genius who purposely tanked the 2011 tOSU season (maybe out of spite for Fickell being selected interim HC). Or he's a schlub who managed to get Cook & company serviceable for one season (but will eventually be responsible for tanking MSU's offense). Which is it?

If Bollman prospers at MSU, I wish nothing but bad juju for him for what he did in 2011.

I always found it concerning about our society in General that a football coach would find it his responsibility to "mold" an 18 year old man. Pretty sad times when it appears the parents of our society have forgotten that is their job.

"I spent 90 percent of my money on women and drink. The rest I wasted." - George Best

My point being Americans are more and more pointing at someone else to raise their kids. Obviously teachers have input in a persons life but without appropriate parenting its very often lost on the child. I've had this discussion with elementary school teachers that are friends of mine and they say they have clearly seen a reduction in parental accountability.

"I spent 90 percent of my money on women and drink. The rest I wasted." - George Best

I would still hold out on my opinion of Urban until he starts dismissing with haste more players that he recruited. It would be easy to cut guys you didn't necessarily want to be there in the first place than guys you were in their living rooms and met their moms and dads.

“Any time you give a man something he doesn't earn, you cheapen him. Our kids earn what they get, and that includes respect.” - Woody

Great article, agreed that ther coaching styles are night and day. I respectfully disagree that saving young men is a twisted obsession. Sometimes we fail to remember some of these young men come from horrible backgrounds.

There's one more way to look at this - rather than simply analyzing Tressel's desire to rehab "project" players versus Meyer's "zero tolerance" mindset on potential issues, consider what history has taught us in spades: there is no tolerance in the sports media/social media universe for flaps from highly-publicized Ohio State leaders.

Tressel was forced out for the most nonsensical of reasons, as was Gordon Gee two years later. Carlos Hyde was crucified in the press for what was in essence a non-event. I could go on and on.

While the SEC teams of the world (looking at you, 'Bama) say "eff 'em" when it comes to critics of the bagman culture we all assume exists, any whiff of impropriety North of the Mason-Dixon is met with the hue and cry of an accused witch in 17th-century Salem, Mass.

If the pen is truly mightier than the sword, I may be the most dangerous man I know...

Fantastic write-up as always. To echo the above points to some extent, both Urban and Tress learned the hard way that caring too much will come back to haunt you. Also both coaches had a lot of experience before Social Media was popular. Now that it is, no big time program's coach can afford to "care too much", lest they find themselves temporarily unemployed.

While I think your post is a bit strong in its contempt....or skeptism toward Meyer, I will agree that the 2 Michigan wins as an exception, his next win at OSU on the National Stage with national title implications....will be his first.

For all the bile in this fanbase directed at the Tressel-Bollman combination vs. the Meyer - Mensa combination, I dare say that Tress and Bollman won the games in 2002 with everything on the line...while the mensa combo could not. Yes, yes, Tress and Bollman won with a vastly superior Defense, no need to remind. But when the 2 biggest games of the Meyer-Herman era were on the line...and the offense had the ball, our current coaching braintrust puked into their headsets.

But in fairnes....snarky comments aside, let's give the Meyer era some time before we decide on its place in Buckeye history.

And one last thing to finish my mini-rant.....the "culture" mystique rans its course by the end of last year. There was an element on last year's team that had heard enough of the "chase" and its related bull-shit that you could see the kids were ready for the season to be over. If you don't believe me..re-watch the 1st quarter of the Sparty game and the first quarter of the Clemson game. Or then again....don't.

You're right. I forgot about those inspired performances in the B1G CG and Orange Bowl last year. What was I thinking?

Reggie Jackson was Mr. October because he did it best when it mattered most. There was another Yankee (I can't remember who) whom George Steinbrenner called "Mr. April" because he was at his best when it mattered least.

As we enter year 3 of the Urban Meyer era at Ohio State, the record suggests that Meyer is more Mr. April than Mr. October. And consider this: Urban won those Nat'l Championships at Florida with possibly the greatest college football leader/player of all time on the roster. Then Tebow left, it all fell apart and Urban quit (then un-quit and quit again).

I would love to be proved wrong about Urban, I really would. But when I look at how it ended at Florida after Tebow graduated and I look at how last year ended when things got real...I think: More sizzle than steak... All hat, no cattle... More talk than walk... Etc...

1) Tressel didn't take over a team on probation with scholarship reductions and a bowl ban.

2) Tressel never won 24 in a row.

3) Tressel never had to play a B1G championship game.

4) Remember those a$$ whippings Tressel took from Florida, LSU, and USC? Meyer has lost 2 games by a grand total off 15 points and still hasn't lost to _ichigan.

5) Tressel won his championship with mostly Coopers players.

I will always love Tressel, but I think you should give Meyer a little time before you pass judgement. In a couple of years if he hasn't won any B1G championships or a bowl game, then you can call his tenure a bust.

1. Tressel took over a team in shambles and whose lack of academic effort was a national joke; a team whose fall from excellence in 1998 was practically stunning. A team whose players were suing each other when they weren't busy being Michigan's bitches.

2. Tressel did not win 24 games in a row, that is true; while his teams played the likes of Youngstown St, they also played Texas, Miami and USC OOC. Who has Meyer played in recent years? UAB?

3. True; his team also beat Miami in the NC Game; recent Buckeyes have not played a team of this caliber or anywhere in its hemisphere.

4. Agree with you on the ass whippings....no argument there. I will only counter with ...in only the 2nd year of his tenure, and on the cusp of greatness, Meyer's team in 2013 came out embarrassingly flat against Sparty and Clemson. Two very good....but not great football teams. A team who appeared to grow tired of "the chase"....blah, blah.

5. Yes, Tress won his NC with Coop's players. He also won with Mo Clarett, the freshman alpha male on the team who was Tressel's prize recruit. Now take away Tressel's players or those he recruited -- and how many wins does Meyer have these past 2 years?

Okay, D-Day.....I am just playing devils' advocate just to bust your chops. Meyer is the perfect guy for the OSU job right now. My only point....is that so far....he has a gaudy win record against weak competition. I think his teams can achieve greatness, no doubt. But I can clearly support a wait and see attitude before anointing him king of anything just yet.

I consider Sparty's team last year close to being great. That's the only disagreement here.

I don't think this is a matter of which coach is better, or who we like more. We're blessed to have had both. There are just certain things Tressel did because of my personal worldview that mesh better with me. That is all.

If he ever writes or signs off on a tell-all book....it will be as a withered old man....or approved for publishing by his kids after he passes. Otherwise, no f-ing way. I just don't see it under any circumstance. I call b.s. on this.

Indeed a great guy and a elite coach.... this was not a black and white issue, and the NCAA bares some of the responsibility for creating such insanity.

Suddenly all the talk about paying players more, Unions being formed...individuals owning the use of their names and likenesses... there was change in the winds before the Tatoo thang... but since the Tatoogate... it is trending more towards the Vest being vindicated at some level.

Hopefully CF schollie athletes will enjoy the same rights to pursue happiness (make a living) as all other Americans do, and in the future protected against a group of "companies" colluding together(NCAA MEMBERS) to keep the cost of their labor low. I can't imagine a Math Schollie student not talking a job in a think tank because they are paying him/ner too much, or any American Citizen not being allowed to sell their own personal property.

Great read. Amazing how much hate outsiders give Urb for his "lack of control". Hopefully articles like this shed a light on what he really stands for and what he will not tolerate. Then again, what would we do with our free time if ESPN & others stopped casting stones?!?

I would say this article is a gross over-simplification. Tressel cut guys and suspended guys all the time, (as even you note in regards to Small)

and Urban has kept guys who have had off the field issues as well, (again as you noted with Stoney, Mewhort, Roby and Hyde), and as another just noted Baugh has had multiple issues and is still around, how does that jive with the narrative? it doesn't

Tressel cut guys loose after one incident, typically for drug related issues. Urban does seem to be willing to suspend more quickly rather than "let it play out" before he does it, think about Storm Klein

I think most of the difference is style, I think as noted Tressel said things like "teaching moments" etc that gave the impression he was giving 2nd chances etc, and he rarely called out guys behavior either on or off the field

Urban is much more demonstrative is saying guys mis-behaved and have to pay a price

I think the actual difference in their actions as compared to their style or approach are far less different than is claimed.

sure we can point to someone like Boone not ever seemingly getting punished, but who knows what player X today who is a key cog who never gets punished

if anything I think Urban has shown he will treat every one the same where I think Tressel frankly played favorites